For decades, most of the strategizing about how to slow down climate change has focused on cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, mainly by shifting away from fossil fuels. Other proposals range from reducing meat consumption (cattle belch massive quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas) to curtailment of chlorofluorocarbons (compounds that both retain heat and destroy atmospheric ozone) in refrigerants and aerosols.

A new startup founded by two UC Berkeley Haas Business School students aims to give homeowners going solar the leverage to affect more than just the environment.

Window Street Financial—which emerged last fall from an idea generated by Johnny Gannon and Ben Purvis—wants to give them the option of taking a solar loan made up of capital from the endowments of universities, nonprofits and foundations.

For avid watchers of the political saga known as Keystone, it’s another cliffhanger.

Last Friday, the U.S. State Department announced it would kick the can on deciding whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, blowing past its prior May deadline and ensuring that the project will endure as a partisan talking point until well after the November midterm election.

When 29-year-old UC Berkeley student Ophir Bruck spotted Sherry Lansing, the former CEO of Paramount Pictures, on her way to a University of California Regents meeting, he was holding on to a key that he hoped she wouldn’t refuse.

“We’re here to call on the UC Regents to take bold action on climate change,” Bruck told Lansing last May, as she walked past 58 chanting students chained to two homemade structures designed to represent oil drilling rigs. “Will you symbolically unlock us from a future of fossil fuel dependence and climate chaos?”

Posted on April 21, 2014 - 12:48pm

Latest Issue: Spring 2020

Join the Conversation…

In One Man’s Search for Baseball’s Underdogs: Having been only an off-and-on baseball fan, I really enjoyed reading this article. When I first started going out with my now husband, we went to a lot of A’s games and what I...

— Roberta Brooks :: 5/8/2020 12:40pm

In Is ‘They’ Here to Stay?: I agree, the word “cool” is a great pick for word of the 20th century. “Media” to me is also a good candidate. Thanks for an enlightening read. Will look for the new podcast in the summer.

CALIFORNIA Classic

August Vollmer, the City of Berkeley’s first police chief and a pioneer of criminal justice classes at UC Berkeley, was an early voice on policing practices. He advocated for the hiring of black cops and extolled “scientific police work,” not rough justice. “Society needs and must somehow obtain truly exceptional men to discharge police duties,” he wrote. Vollmer may have naïve to think that police officers could be the enlightened übermenschen he envisioned, but he had a vision, one engendered by good intentions and an innate sense of social and racial equity.